ICRC presses Sri Lanka on fate of 16,000 war missing

Displaced Tamil civilians wait for food at Manic farm in the northern Sri Lankan district of Vavuniya on May 7, 2009 ©Pedro Ugarte (AFP/File)

By AFP-26 July 2016

The International Red Cross Tuesday urged Sri Lanka on Tuesday to disclose the fate of more than 16,000 people still officially missing since the island's ethnic war ended seven years ago.

The Geneva-based organisation released a 14-month survey conducted across Sri Lanka showing thousands of mainly ethnic Tamils were still searching for their loved ones.

The survey and resulting 34-page report titled "Living with Uncertainty" called on Sri Lankan authorities to "clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing persons".

Of 395 families surveyed by the Red Cross, just over one third believed their loved ones were dead while another third were convinced they were still alive somewhere. The remaining third were unsure.

"The survey found that these families primarily want to know the fate and whereabouts of their missing relative and that they also face economic, legal and administrative difficulties in their daily lives," it said.

Government forces crushed Tamil rebels fighting for a separate homeland for the ethnic minority, in a brutal offensive in 2009. Some 40,000 people are thought to have been killed in the final few months of the conflict alone.

Huge numbers of Tamils disappeared during the 37-year war including after being arrested by security services, while thousands more died in military bombardments.

Thousands of people also went missing during a crackdown by security forces and pro-government vigilante groups on Marxist rebels between 1987 and 1990.

The ICRC said it has registered 16,000 people as missing since setting up a presence in Sri Lanka in 1989. The database includes more than 5,100 security personnel listed as missing.

President Maithripala Sirisena has taken steps to reconcile with the Tamil community since coming to power last January, including by setting up a missing persons office to help families seek compensation.

Last month, the government announced a landmark law to recognise as dead those still missing, allowing relatives to claim inheritances.

The cabinet approved a draft bill to issue "certificates of absence" to the families of those who went missing.

Several mass graves containing skeletal remains have been found in the past two decades, but only a handful of those buried have ever been formally identified.